As far as documenting the Aussie suburban life goes, Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001) is a great example. Big in scale, simplistic yet beautiful in form, complex in nature and deeply metaphorical in meaning -Much like the Australian landscape and nature, from which the film draws many parallels and references as well as its title. It is a film which carefully and quite brilliantly showcase the lives of a number of individuals, all of whose lives are in their own ways as complex and intricate as the paths and events that link their relationships to one another.
The significance of the Australian landscape, indelible and almost indispensable to the Australian culture, is given due importance alongside the portrayal of suburban life. The lantana bush, appearing as innocent and innocuous, hides away its innate viciousness, disguising its pricks and thorns behind the intricate twines and pretty leaves that surround it. Lying dormant in various parts of the suburb, it becomes the metaphorical message that underlies as well as drives the film’s plot. The lantana bush becomes the symbol of suburban life, as portrayed in the film, resembling the vicious lies and painful insecurities, sadness and jealousy that haunt the characters underneath their very own fabricated disguises. The film explores the theme of relationships, aligning it with ideas about adultery, divorce, happiness, love and loss and even (homo)sexuality. Each of its characters plays out a particular aspect or possibility that constitutes the mentioned theme. Claudia plays a policewoman fond of a man she hasn’t met, Nik and Paula play a young married couple, Leon and Sonja play the older married couple, Pete plays a homosexual who is dating a married man, Jane is the divorcee and John and Valerie the couple bereft of their child. Each one of them is as complex as the very fraction of the theme that they represent, not to mention the interwoven paths and relationships between one character and the other. When Valerie, the therapist who had been helping Sonja and Pete with their problems, is gone missing, almost everyone in this complex web of relationships are affected. As Leon investigates the case, the hidden personalities, lies and deceit associated with the characters are slowly dug up.
When it is finally revealed that it was not murder and that Valerie had fallen off a cliff after running through the bush in the dark, one is led to remind him/herself of the significance and monstrosity of nature, of the hidden pricks and thorns that can work to harm and even kill. The message resonated through Valerie’s death emphasises the importance to look beyond the surface and behind the appearance, to not be afraid to free oneself from the clutches of the past and our fabricated lives. It takes its course in becoming the turning point in the lives of the characters. It becomes the agent through which truth, reconciliation, faith and emancipation are attained. More importantly, it seeks to remind us that the role of nature can be just as overwhelming as it is overpowering. Its significance, like the prowess of the landscape that has often been undermined and even forgotten, thrusts itself onto the forefront of our minds, and a haunting thought about land, occupier and nature is called to surface.
Talking Film - Tackling Celluloid 